Email with your students? Take it easy, step-by-step

by Travelin' Librarian at flickr

Here's a challenging assignment: Chris Mooney came into the teacher room asking for ideas and guidance around setting up email accounts for all her students. Yes, that can be a huge and daunting job, especially if you try to set up all the accounts in one go. [I have tried that, and Never Again is my motto.]

So here are some ideas that came up while Chris and i were talking about it:

Single group email account
1) You could start, not with individual email accounts, but rather with a single account for the whole class. For example eslmerrilands [at] gmail.com, or something like that. [if it's available]

Do a lot of the learning as a group, before people venture out on their own.

..because the literacies involved are enormous at this point. What does each part of the screen represent? What are all the language terms about? - compose, inbox, reply [sign up vs sign in!] (What is the usual social context and how does the technology 'position' the learner etc..?)

First off, i would always use the data projector to show how the whole thing works, if possible.

After demonstrating the basics, hand the (wireless) keyboard over to students and invite them to operate the controls. You could give the (wireless) mouse to a different student, so that the mouse person and the keyboard person have to talk about controlling the screen.

Using the scanner to get text

Tina came in today wanting to know how to use the scanner. "Aha!" I thought, "Finally an easy question."

Because of course i'd already made a "how to document" for using the flatbed scanner in the teachers' room. I just need to remember where i've saved the file ^_^

How wrong i was.

Just as well i looked for the file, because i needed to read it in order to remember how do use the scanner. It's not intuitive by any stretch of anyone's imagination. Scanners are rarely intuitive - especially on windows machines.

Here's what we discovered:

1) Open "Computer", also known as "Windows Explorer" or "My computer"
2) Find & start the Scanner & camera wizard
3) Put your scanned file into optical character recognition (OCR).

This last step was broken because for some reason the "microsoft office document imaging service" was no longer installed on this machine. Fortunately i could re-install it without needing administration super-powers.

And bingo. 25 minutes later we have the power to scan text from a document.

NB usually scanners just get image files. For this project Tina needed the actual text, which is more difficult and needs extra software to do the "optical character recognition (OCR)" business.

Relevant Links: here's the document in PDF format.

PS: you can also use the photocopier for ordinary image scanning. Fraser & Maria made a set of instructions for this .. look on the wall near the copier.

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Photo by Archaeobobalist (creative commons at flickr).

New way to book equipment

Hello to all the Wonderful Teachers and Staff at Preston Reservoir Adult Community Education (PRACE). We're moving to a new system for booking equipment like cameras, laptops and so forth. Essentially it's a spreadsheet, and it's online so you can access it any time you have internet nearby. No more looking for that piece of paper in the office at Merrilands, or having to ring Maria in the office. 


You need to login to google.com/docs*, so you'll need to remember your PRACE gmail ID & login. [No i'm not putting any hints out here on the open web.]


[if you want, there's a shortcut directly into the booking sheet: j.mp/pracequip]


Here's michael giving an overview of the new system. This newer video is still longer than i'd like it, at 6 minutes, but it gives more detail on how to make a new line within a spreadsheet cell (essential for multiple bookings as it stands).

Music videos at the Reservoir Baptist Church

I went down to the Reservoir Baptist Church, where Yvonne and Paula have been wrestling with the machinery.. to get it under control. Internet, printers, the data projector.. and extension cords! 

I was hunting around for more musical sites and found this one: Lyrics Training which actually has cloze activities at multiple levels for some videos. 

We hooted in the Merrilands teacher room because  the Chris Isaak video is so suggestive. Would this motivate your students, distract them or upset them?

Here's one that might be more suitable: ABBA plays "Money Money Money". Plus a few more links:

• It's Now or Never - Elvis Presley
• You've got a Friend - Celine Dion and friends
• Money, Money, Money - ABBA
• Better be Home Soon - Crowded House
• Diamonds - Rihanna
• Bonnie & Clyde - Rihanna (funny)
• Set Fire to the Rain - Adele (harder)
• Someone Like You - Adele (harder)

...and if you want more, you can search the site for songs you like. 

i found the site via Larry Ferlazzo who is a great collector of "best of" lists for ESL, for example his page on the best music sites for English language learners.

We started setting up a new wiki page for the learners at Reservoir Baptist Church, on the Learn At PRACE site. (Stay tuned for more details.)

On top of that, there's a site called "TubeOke". Doesn't have the same interactive quality as lyrics training though.









Other technical things: web browsers and video players

We looked at a few other things. There's been such difficulty around the Adobe Flash player in the last few years. One solution Fraser has come up with is to recommend people use the google Chrome web browser instead of microsoft Internet Explorer. Chrome comes with Flash built-in, so it doesn't need administrator permission to show youtube videos. 

(And you don't need admin permission to install it either. Brilliant web browser.)

Yvonne and Paula have been looking for ways to include more music in their language teaching. We looked at music videos on Youtube and we installed a thing called "Youtube Enhancer" which lets you download videos onto the local drive. This can be great if your classroom internet access isn't so good. Download the videos before class, and use VLC player to play them in class. 

Update Nov14: this youtube enhancer doesn't work well anymore. Zoe has been experimenting with an alternative called "KeepVid".

We looked at VLC video player which (in my opinion) is one of the very best software video players around. It's free and open source, and supported by a strong worldwide community. VLC also takes screengrabs really well - which can be super useful for language teaching. 

Other links: 

• By the way, Larry has other 'best of' pages, including best youtube channels: 
  • Best of the year lists,
  • Best youtube channels for learning English.
• [Extra information: What is a web browser?] 
• KeepVid works in any web browser as long as you have a plugin called JAVA. 
• VLC video and media player.

New Easi Speak adds Journalistic Effect

Someone in the PRACE office bought a new set of the Easi-Speak microphones, before the new year. Well done, someone! (i think it was Jennifer. Champion.)

These little gadgets are (reasonably) easy to use: the Red button to Record, and the Green button to Play. It's a bit more complex than that, but each kit has

• a microphone,
• a set of instructions,
• a big A4 version of the most important bits in the instructions, and
• a cable to connect to the computer.

Essentially, you need to know what the flashing light (LED) means: this information is on the big A4 set of instructions. "Steady red" means recording in progress. When you want to move the files onto the computer, you use the USB connector in the end of the gadget. They need charging, which happens when you connect to the computer.

The picture above shows Michael Chalk interviewing the very wonderful Chris Mooney on the day of our Morning Tea. People from many different classes came along and socialised with each other. Several people had a go at using the microphones to interview their colleagues, including Lou and James.

If you're looking for ideas to use these audio gadgets in your classroom, try the PRACE research project known as "Can You Hear Us?".